My choral composition Tabula Rasa was performed by The UBC Singers. Great Performance! [youtube]http://youtu.be/J77aNNhNZTA[/youtube] The work is to be performed by the Vancouver based Phoenix Chamber Choir on April 30. Here’s a link to their website. (http://www.phoenixchamberchoir.bc.ca/concerts/spring.html)
This weekend the DaCapo Chamber choir is to premiere my composition ‘Tabula Rasa”, winner of the New Works Choral Competition.
Persephone’s Nightmare Listen This music is for a scene late in act 3 (there are currently 3 acts). Persephone is on her journey back to the underworld after seeing Demeter her mother for the last time. Once a powerful and beautiful kingdom that relieved the dead of their suffering it has been transformed into a […]
KHAOS – Scene 5 A scene with Demeter and the upper world chorus. My voice is obviously substituted for all vocalists. As you listen to the demo take note of one of the lead female voices. She is actually my voice transposed up an octave using computer software that I use called Digital Performer. I’ll […]
KHAOS – Scene 6 Well it’s 3 months into the new year and ages since anything has been posted on the site. This absence is actually due to real progress on the libretto writing front as well as some modest inroads into the music. Nicola has come up with some beautiful prose and I can’t […]
Music Study No 2 Seven Sisters Dancing – I wrote a few images down on a piece of paper (wind over ice – etc.) and then my wife Allison came up with the image of seven sisters dancing – an old Iroquois Legend that I think speaks very nicely to the feeling of space and […]
Post by Don Macdonald – Nicola included a few references to images in her early notes about the opera: ” Stilts, skeletons, a march”. I created the image below using photo shop for fun to see what I could come up with (I’m a composer not an artist believe me). These are pretty dark and […]
Welcome to the KHAOS website. Composer Don Macdonald and writer/librettist Nicola Harwood have been commissioned by the Amy Ferguson Institute to write a full length opera called “KHAOS”, a re-imagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter that reinforces our understanding of the seasonal cycles of death and regeneration. Set in a mythical present, KHAOS […]
Study #1) NOV 2009 Compilation. This piece is a study exploring a potential thematic concept for Persephone, some darker harmonic ideas later that may work for the world that Hades has created and an ending that explores the tragedy of the ill fated romance between Hades and Persephone. Early days though…. ideas could end up […]